12 days of Christmas

By PYMNTS | December 10, 2013



		12 Retailers Innovating With Mobile To kick off our annual 12 Days of Christmas article series, we’re providing readers with a deep dive into the retail revolution currently taking the industry by storm. Which retailers are embracing mobile, for better or worse, heading into the new year, and how will their decisions shape the year to come? PYMNTS.com explores by taking a close look at 12 major mobile retail players

		The 11 Ways Cloud Computing Is Changing Payments Cloud computing has put fast and secure payments in the hands of countless businesses and consumers in the past few years. However, you might not have given thought to the many ways in which the cloud has directly influenced your life. Read the second installment of our 12-day holiday feature and learn for yourself.

		10 eCommerce Players, Playing The eCommerce sector continued to grow by leaps and bounds in 2013, becoming the new normal for U.S. consumers. However, less notable stakeholders also made inroads abroad, while a collection of smaller eCommerce enablers popped up at home. Who are these eCommerce companies that may have missed your eye? We give you 10 notable names in the latest of our 12 Days of Christmas series.

		9 Mobile Money Markets With the pace of mobile payments innovation moving at lightspeed in the U.S., tracking developments abroad can be time consuming. So, in the spirit of giving this holiday season, PYMNTS.com presents an update of the mobile payments ecosystem in the top nine emerging markets as picked by Bloomberg. Unwrap this present to find facts and figures you can share.

		8 Tablets, Tapping Technology at the point of sale is changing quickly, sparked by cloud-based processing made simpler with software running on computerized tablets. These changes are bringing to smaller merchants the kind of increased sophistication once available only to retailers with big budgets. As such, smaller merchants in 2014 will flock to tablet-based systems that can help their stores drive more business and manage their operations.

		7 Bitcoin Challengers, Challenging While Bitcoin certainly has the most name recognition, the truth is that there are other cryptocurrencies on the web that are all wrangling for attention, market capitalization and future use. In the fifth installment of our seasonal PYMNTS 12 Days of Christmas, we look at seven of the many “altcoins” vying for a spot in the major leagues.

		6 Google-Funded Ventures To Watch In 2014 Google has emerged not only as a leading tech company and aspiring payments firm in 2013, but also a VC powerhouse through Google Ventures. What hot companies do the experts at Google think are the next best thing? In the latest installment of our 12 Days of Christmas series, we bring you six Google Ventures-backed payments companies that could be garnering a larger share of the headlines come 2014. Which projects made our list?

		5 Golden Issues For ISOs In 2014 In the acquiring market, some of the primary issues independent sales organizations will face next year will be similar to ones faced this year. Pressure to address them will increase in importance, however, as ISOs look to remedy difficult situations. Some changes in strategic direction may be necessary.
		4 Mockable Trends Welcome to What’s Trending In Payments – a weekly look at the most popular, irreverent and important stories the payments industry had to offer over the past five days. Which companies grabbed the most headlines – for better or for worse – this week, and which topics have the industry abuzz with intrigue, laughter or disbelief? Featuring breakdowns from the PYMNTS.com staff and commentary by Karen Webster, here’s our take on what all of you payments peeps thought.

		3 Reasons EMV Won’t Happen In The U.S. At this point, it’s safe to say that EMV isn’t exactly a sexy solution. The standard put in place by Europay, MasterCard and Visa in the 2000s as a way to fight fraud at the physical point of sale has lost much of its luster in the U.S. as shopping moves toward mobile and online.

		Apple’s 2 Payments Paths For 2014 Heading into 2014, Apple is clear laser-focused on retail. But, that doesn’t mean its commerce strategy is ironclad. The Cupertino company currently controls both endpoints to the ecosystem – consumers and merchants, but deciding which one is the key to unlocking mobile payments could be its next challenge. Which path is Apple likely to choose in 2014? PYMNTS.com explores in our latest 12 Days of Christmas feature.

		PYMNTS Player Of The Year With mobile and online payments reshaping commerce, the payments ecosystem is going through a metamorphosis, and it’s not yet clear what tomorrow’s payments butterfly will be. Merchants, consumers, regulators are all shaping this future, but one stakeholder is having the biggest impact of them all. Who is our pick for PYMNTS Player of the Year?